


free coffee ;

by therentyoupay



Category: Frozen (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coffee Shops, F/M, Matchmaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-02 02:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4041721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therentyoupay/pseuds/therentyoupay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Really, he is usually not this bad at this.</p><p>— In which Jack literally cannot for the life of him catch Elsa's name. { Jack/Elsa, maybe-Coffee Shop!AU }</p>
            </blockquote>





	free coffee ;

**Author's Note:**

> 5/30/15. Just a quick ficlet. :) This one is for a tumblr anon, who requested the prompt shown below. I'm accepting drabble requests on [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com/ask)!
> 
> "Okay so as you are one of my ABSOLUTE FAV FIC WRITERS TO EVER BE I thought I'd send a prompt I'd seen from a meme involving an AU where a person is introduced but the other person hears their name wrong and then keeps calling that person by the wrong name! Your choice of fandom/pairing - whichever you think would fit the prompt best!!"
> 
> :)

 

**free coffee ;**

* * *

 

The first time Jackson Overland gets her name wrong is when he’s writing it on the side of her coffee cup.

The queue is your typical early-morning stampede of caffeine-deprived business professionals and sleep-deprived college kids. They stand with the self-important impatience of those who believe their time is more valuable than anyone else’s, who feel entitled to the world in general, but especially their fast espresso service.

And it’s Jack’s current patron who is currently holding up the line.

It’s hard to hear, but: “Elphie with an  _A_ ,” insists a cute, twenty-something girl in business-casual attire, with a helpful smile beneath her freckles. Her bright hair is distractingly pretty.

“Er… Right,” Jack nods, hesitating, marker hovering—it draws through the air, just for a moment, writing nothing in nothingness—and then his felt-tipped marker flies over the cardboard, illegible scribbles and a dot.

Even he doesn’t know what he’s written.

—

The second time is the following morning, when Cute Redhead Girl is back, her strawberry hair still bright and her helpful smile still brighter, and the line is only marginally more manageable.

“My name is Anna,” she says over the din, just a fraction too loud. “ _Two_  N’s. But the iced latte is for—”

Someone at the serving station is a little too heavy-handed with the carton of soy milk, so the rest of her words are drowned out by a general noise of alarm as a customer’s iced coffee overflows onto the bar and soaks the dispenser of napkins.

The other baristas rush over to help perform a hasty bout of customer service, but Jack remains rooted to his spot over the pastry display, and tries to look as incontestably busy as possible. “A and E,” Jack mumbles, scribbling something that looks dangerously close to a ‘3’ and not at all the start of someone’s name. And then, because Jack is still  _Jack_  even when he’s temporarily sucking at his job, and because he specializes in a very particular brand of customer service, he dips a congenial brow and smirks, “Flavored syrup?”

Really, he is usually not this bad at this.

—

It’s 4PM, and it’s dead. The morning rush is over, the lunch bunch have come and gone, and the “I-need-a-pick-me-up” 2PM-ers have left the building. A few stragglers have come and gone, but most people are done drinking coffee for the day.

Which is why he is not at all expecting Anne to walk in through the door.

He pushes himself off of the counter immediately, and she perks up at the sight of him–which, okay, so apparently he was kind of hoping that she might recognize him by now, Jesus,  _play it cool, Overland_.

“You there, sir,” she greets, strolling toward the register, “are an old man.”

His smirk pinches into a confused squint, then evens out into a warm-and-winning grin. “Then you have to admit I’m lookin’ pretty good.”

She levels him with a not-so-impressed glare, but whatever. He’s allowed at least one run-of-the-mill dickish-comment every now and then.

“What I  _mean_ ,” she says, “is that your hearing is terrible. I have century-old great-grandfathers who can hear better than you.”

Jack is confused. Is she here to buy coffee? Is this flirting? Is Jack supposed to be trying to one-up a one-hundred-year-old man right now?

“Can’t really argue with that,” he shakes his head, but he’s grinning… until he catches onto the fact that she’s staring, and it’s not necessarily to check him out.

She’s… calculating?

“Can I ask you something?” she steps forward, places both hands on the counter. Jack looks down, automatically, and when he looks up again she’s gained a determined gleam to her eyes.

His quick wit dries in the face of freckles and cute hair. “Sure…?”

“How do you feel about blind dates?”

—

The third time is when he meets her, later that night, at some event for a new middle-class club opening downtown. It’s not 7:30AM and his ears aren’t full with grinding coffee, but the heavy bass and midnight crowds of people are probably a good enough excuse, Jack figures.

(It turns out that _blind dates_ actually translate to  _group_  blind dates, or actually more like,  _hey, you look like a nice, fun guy–wanna do me a solid and hang out with my beautiful, impressively badass sister? Totally on the down-low, though, if it’s cool, because she’s just about had it up to here with me tryin’ to set her up with nice, studious, preppy guys, so like–uh. That was probably TMI, wasn’t it?_ )

“This is my friend, Jack!” shouts Anna, who he has finally stopped calling  _Anne_. It’s funny that Anna is calling him her friend when they only just learned each other’s names that morning; it’s sweet because she actually means it. After a three hour-long chat over free coffee though–most of which was about this supposed sister, and his life goals, and _what is this, an interview?_ –he guesses that he might mean it, too.

“He’s essentially an old man,” Anna ribs pleasantly, side-eyeing her sister, and Jack shrugs with cheerful acquiescence mostly because he’s still too tongue-tied to say anything witty or meaningful. (He goes still with awkward awareness when he catches the tail-end of Anna’s mumbled  _perfect for you_ to her sister, and actively pretends to be fascinated by the flashing lights.)

“Hello,” nods her sister, all polite smiles and polite distance. It’s a feat, considering the number of people in this crowd. Someone is definitely grinding up on Jack’s ass right now.

“Jack, this is El–a,” Anna introduces, smile a mile-wide, and–well. Damn. He’s officially missed her name for the millionth time. How the fuck had Anna never mentioned it to him that afternoon? (How the fuck had he not thought to  _ask_?)

He forces a wide grin and reaches out an easy hand–placidly reminds himself that the decision to embark on this weird little adventure was mostly based in curiosity and the promise of probably spending time with a pretty nice girl and her cute and funny sister–and feels his ambivalence fade into searing heat. 

In the span of a single breath, Jack loses all sense of being surrounded by too many people and a hell of a lot of noise, and instead feels his focus narrow to the space between their hands, all the points at which skin touch skin. A spark surges up through his fingers and shoots into his chest, and it’s as he’s staring slack-jawed into what he hopes is a matching expression on this woman’s face that he realizes he still doesn’t fucking know her name.

That to ask for her name  _now_  would definitely, without a doubt, classify him as a dick.

“Hey,” he says instead, a little reverently, a little nervously, and in the far corners of his mind he wonders how many subtle and strategic ways he might stealthily figure out this girl’s name by the end of the night. What? He can be sneaky.

“Hi,” she says back, with a smile that flips his stomach,  _oh god_.

“Perfect,” says Anna, grinning, like she knows exactly what’s up, like she’s loving the show, and it occurs to Jack to wonder if Anna is mischievous enough to have set  _all_  of this up on purpose. All of it. The little fox.

Jack isn’t sure if he’s found a new best friend or a well-seasoned prankster or just a really,  _really_  nice, match-making samaritan, but either way, Anna is probably getting free coffee for the rest of her damn life.

* * *

 

 


End file.
